Europe Plan By Turner

Published: March 9, 1993

LONDON, March 8—
Turner Broadcasting System Inc., the owner of the Cable News Network, said today that it would begin a service bringing cartoons and old movies to European satellite television. It will also start broadcasting cartoons to Latin America.

The Turner Network Television Europe division will start running its Cartoon Network and a movie-based TNT channel in September.

"The popularity of our cartoons, films and other entertainment programming in Europe prompted us to bring these two services to the region," said Ted Turner, chairman and president of the company.

Turner's only service in Europe at present is the Cable News Network International news channel , which started in 1985, based on the model of the United States news network CNN.

The company owns an animation library of more than 8,500 cartoons, including Yogi Bear, the Flintstones, the Jetsons and Tom and Jerry. It would draw on these for 14 hours a day of cartoons.

For TNT, on the air 10 hours each day, Turner will use its catalogue of more than 2,500 film titles starring Hollywood legends like Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis and Spencer Tracy.

In the future, it plans to broadcast original films made by TNT and productions by Hanna-Barbera, the cartoon maker, as well as other material.

Both channels will be broadcast in English, with translations into French, Swedish and Norwegian provided in some time periods. The company said it expected to increase the amount of translated broadcast time and to add other languages.

Turner Entertainment Networks International will start broadcasting the animation channel to Latin America on April 30.